346 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



The clerical family has ever been one of the chief glories of prot- 

 estantism. We have no thought of opening an old discussion concerning 

 the differing opinions of two great branches of the Christian church. 

 It may be that the voluntary celibate may rise to a higher plane of 

 sacrifice and devotion than the minister with a family. There have 

 been eminent protestants who have renounced the right of marriage. 

 Among them we find such names as Archbishop Leighton, Samuel 

 Hopkins, William Muhlenberg, author of " I would not live alway," 

 and the historian Neander. Suffice it to say that the reformers can not 

 have been unmindful of the example of the patriarchs, priests and 

 prophets of the Old Testament and the apostles of the New Testament. 

 Peter was married, at least he had a mother-in-law, and Paul claimed 

 the right to do as Peter had done. With this ancient precedent and 

 sanction the reformers can not have been much troubled in conscience 

 when they departed from the rule of one man, Hildebrand, and took 

 to themselves wives. Luther must have had more serious reasons for 

 renouncing the state of celibacy than those which he himself gives, 

 viz., to please his father, tease the Pope and vex the devil. At all 

 events, his home life was bright and happy, an earnest and a type of 

 the clerical family life which he did so much to found. His letters to 

 his children are models of what a father's letters to his children ought 

 to be. .Calvin was perhaps more discreet in his marriage than Luther. 

 He may have been thinking of the sneer of Erasmus. 



Some speak of the Lutheran cause as a tragedy, but to me it appears rather 

 as a comedy, for it always ends in a wedding. 



When Calvin married a demure widow of Strassburg, he could still 

 make his boast that he had not assailed Eome as the Greeks assailed 

 Troy, for the sake of a woman. That these early reformers succeeded in 

 harmonizing the life of the priesthood with the life of the family has 

 been for the glory of the church and the untold enrichment of 

 civilization. 



The minister's home is usually a home of intelligence and refine- 

 ment without that ease and luxury which sap the foundations of char- 

 acter. His home is an answer to a wise man's prayer, " Give me neither 

 riches nor poverty." He never gets riches, sometimes he gets poverty, 

 but more often the lines fall unto him in the pleasant places which lie 

 between those two extremes. However limited, the library of the min- 

 ister's son will have those few books which have been the inevitable 

 companions of genius and attainment — Plutarch's Lives, Pilgrim's 

 Progress, iEsop's Pables, and the Bible. The son of the minister 

 lives in an atmosphere of moral earnestness, intellectual activity and 

 sacrifice and service for that which is highest. If any home ought to 

 send forth a goodly line of stalwart sons it is the home of the minister. 



Oliver Goldsmith, himself a minister's son, opens the " Vicar of 

 Wakefield " with these words : 



